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Comment by henearkr | Hacker News Reader

I think that the WHO communication was proportionate to the current knowledge at the time of each of their interventions.

First of all they said, when it was clear there was a problem "We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test." (and then Trump and almost everybody else did not want to hear that)

And moreover they said more exactly, some time before the previous item, that "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission". So your position is a deformation of their words.

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No. The WHO constantly downplayed this pandemic and kowtowed to China to the point of disgracefully delaying calling it a pandemic and then playing catch-up when individual countries started ignoring the WHO and implemented their own measures.

Then the WHO switched gears and complained that the countries were doing too little too late.

They've been almost completely worthless in this crisis.

The WHO constantly downplayed this pandemic and kowtowed to China

See also: The whole WHO/Taiwan debacle, which is still ongoing.

The WHO is OK risking the lives of people in Taiwan in order to keep the mainland happy. You would think that the WHO would put the health of people, regardless of where they live, ahead of politics.

WHO does not officially recognize Taiwan because the UN does not officially recognize Taiwan, and the WHO is a UN organization. It is as simple as that.if you disagree then you gotta take it to the UN.

It's not about recognition. It's about doing the right thing.

If the virus' impact in Puerto Rico was very different than it was in the rest of the United States, the WHO would note it publicly. But Taiwan't situation was actively suppressed by the WHO because of Beijing.

When has any organization put peoples' lives over politics?

Anyway, the WHO/Taiwan debacle seems to resulted in Taiwan handling this pandemic better than anyone else, considering their proximity to China and the huge amount of trade and travel between them. Taiwan just ignored the WHO and did their own thing, which was the best thing.

Well, they at least published that anti-covid disinfection recipe. At least here in Czech Republic everyone uses that to make emergency disinfection mixtures.

There is no downplaying in "test test test". That could not be farther from downplay. The emergency sense is vibrant in their declaration. Previous declarations were done with a lack of scientific knowledge.

Btw only South Korea did "test test test". And that succeded very very much.

The WHO is obviously in China's pocket. I mean they can't even bring themselves to use the word Taiwan in public communications.

WHO does not officially recognize Taiwan because the UN does not officially recognize Taiwan, and the WHO is a UN organization. It is as simple as that, got nothing to do with being in China’s pocket. If you don’t like that, pressure your government to recognize Taiwan, and pressure them to pressure UN.

OK, but let's ignore the recognition of Taiwan for a second.

China censoring social media chat about the virus[0], tons of talk among experts that China faked their numbers and dates[1], meanwhile the WHO praises 'Chinese Transparency'[2][3], while hinting that the actions of censorship and moderate reporting were the right idea to avoid widespread panic.[4]

I'm not anti-WHO, but it's getting harder to believe that they are working objectively. China did a lot wrong in regards to response, but the WHO seems to want to heap on the praise. It makes one wonder. The weird non-response and hangup regarding Taiwan was just the topping on the cake, and it was entirely irresponsible on the WHOs part.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/05/chinese-social...

[1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/08/8037667...

[2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/28-01-2020-who-china-le...

[3]: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcr...

[4]: https://apnews.com/16cd6173232a01ec04780db3eea4de79?fbclid=I...

Statements in sources you cite seem rather deceptive, for example insinuating that censorship delayed response. Wiki has a pretty factually sourced timeline with precise dates, and it shows the infamous Dr. Li in question messaged a private group about a lab report he saw from Dec 30 (authorities found out because it was reshared on public forum), when the WHO was notified if it on Dec 31. He was also reprimanded for claiming it was a sars outbreak, when there's no evidence at the time. I suspect many of these news sources are aware of these underlying facts, if they're the sort to do any research before publishing, so the only interesting question here is why they chose to be deceptive anyway.

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